My dad is a history buff, and one of his areas of interest is the conflicts between Native Americans and the pioneers and settlers who took over their land. He always takes the side of the Native Americans. One of his heroes is the great Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph, who led the United States […]
John Nichols knows his New Mexico birds. There’s a good list of birds seen in The Milagro Beanfield War, starting with the flock of nesting killdeer that feature in the opening scene of the book with one of the town’s historic figures, Cleofes Apodaca. There are both literal and figurative buzzards (turkey vultures) and zopilotes (black […]
There aren’t very many birds in So Far From God by Ana Castillo, but the ones that are mentioned are more than just background fluff. Around the time Sofi decides to run for la mayor of Tome, it’s mentioned that a gringo has bought some land nearby and is raising peacocks. One of the things […]
I was a bit torn in my reaction to the bird aspects of The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church. The author acknowledges that while she is a birder she is more interested in behavior than species identification and that certainly comes through in Meridian’s character as well. There are occasional comments about […]
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church would be a fantastic book for a book club discussing feminist issues–I may have to post it as a suggestion to Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf. I was somewhat mislead by the descriptions into thinking there would be more about the development of the atomic bomb, […]